White supremacist groups say they will mobilise members to watch polls in areas largely populated by people of colour on Election Day, prompting concerns of conflict and an effort to disenfranchise black voters by the alt-right wing of Donald Trump’s support.

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Leaders of the Oath Keepers, the National Socialist Movement, the Ku Klux Klan, and the American Freedom Party told Politico that they intend to monitor polling places “informally” or on behalf of the Trump campaign.

The Trump campaign – which recently earned the...newspaper – has galvanised supporters from the white supremacist fringes of US politics. Mr Trump himself urged his supporters to watch the polls in “certain areas” of Pennsylvania.

Last week, a senior Trump official told Bloomberg Businessweek that the campaign had initiated a “voter suppression” to discourage black voters, white liberals, and young women from voting.

Donald Trump's most controversial quotes

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A representative from the alt-right website “The Right Stuff”, who have reportedly partnered with Neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin, told Politico that they plan to act on the suppression plan in Philadelphia.

“We are organising poll watchers in urban areas to cut down on the most traditional type of voter fraud,” the anonymous representative said, detailing a plan to hide cameras in various locations.

They added: “We also have some teams going into the ghettos in Philly with 40s and weed to give out to the local residents, which we think will lead to more of them staying home. We have had success with this in the past.”

Trump Quickly Rebukes David Duke

Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League told Politico he was sceptical any efforts by Mr Anglin or his alt-right associates would come to fruition. However, he said, plans of the Oath Keepers – the militia made up of former law enforcement officers and military personnel – seemed much more likely to materialise.

America unmasked: The images that reveal the Ku Klux Klan is alive and kicking

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The Oath Keepers issued a call last week for “members to form up incognito intelligence gathering and crime spotting team … dressed to blend in with the public” and monitor polling places for voter fraud.

Civil rights advocates are concerned that the presence of these white supremacists will spark violence on 8 November.

“The possibility of violence on or around Election Day is very real,” Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Centre told Politico. “Donald Trump has been telling his supporters for weeks and weeks and weeks now that they are about to have the election stolen from them by evil forces on behalf of elites.”

But Mr Potok said that a presence of white supremacist “monitors” could certainly encourage voters to hold their ground and cast their ballots in spite of the intimidation.

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“If on the morning of Election Day it turns out that we have white supremacists standing around looking threatening at polling places, I think it would arouse anger,” he said. “People would vote just to prove they’re not being intimidated by these radical racists.”

Although Mr Trump decries...ral system, there is no definitive proof that voter fraud is a widespread problem in the US. A Loyola Law School study found only 31 certifiable cases of voter fraud among 1 billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014.

In fact, the most recent case of actual voter fraud came from an Iowa woman arrested afte...r Mr Trump. She claimed she feared her initial Trump vote would be changed to a vote for Hillary Clinton.

My advice: Black people should go to the polls in numbers, let the first group go in and vote while the second group of Blacks stay outside with guns. This is what my family and the Black community did in 1968.... as my grandparents witness members of their family vote for the 1st time. The place, Pulaski TN,

One of them came into the campaign office of my son's candidate. He threatened to blow them up. He then came back, tried to apologize, and ended up saying he hopes someone blows them all up.

I'm pretty sure that threatening a candidate for federal office in their campaign headquarters is domestic terrorism or a threat thereof. I'm guessing that is a federal offense.

I damn sure intend to find out.

BTW, this guy is a white guy and a white-collar worker.

I would not be surprised if your story is a work of fiction as you already know that answer and that Dems burned down the church to rally its own base. Just like after Trump won all the so called graffiti was proven to be done by people angry Trump won. Rodeo if this man threatened your son then you should go to the authorities! Instead of not sure if it was a threat. The story for one doesn't make any logical sense.

One of them came into the campaign office of my son's candidate. He threatened to blow them up. He then came back, tried to apologize, and ended up saying he hopes someone blows them all up.

I'm pretty sure that threatening a candidate for federal office in their campaign headquarters is domestic terrorism or a threat thereof. I'm guessing that is a federal offense.

I damn sure intend to find out.

BTW, this guy is a white guy and a white-collar worker.

I would not be surprised if your story is a work of fiction as you already know that answer and that Dems burned down the church to rally its own base. Just like after Trump won all the so called graffiti was proven to be done by people angry Trump won. Rodeo if this man threatened your son then you should go to the authorities! Instead of not sure if it was a threat. The story for one doesn't make any logical sense.

Journalist Carl Bernstein said Sunday that President Trump has discussed ways to challenge the results of the midterm elections if the GOP's grasp on power slips.

During an appearance on CNN, Bernstein said his sources relayed this information to him on Friday, warning that Trump has talked about a disruption campaign if the results are close but have the Democrats taking control of the House or Senate.

"I talked to people ... in touch with the White House on Friday who believe that, if the congressional midterms are very close and the Democrats were to win by five or seven seats, that Trump is already talking about how to throw legal challenges into the courts, sow confusion, declare a victory actually, and say that the election's been illegitimate," Bernstein said after being asked if Trump's challenge to fraudulent voters was a form of voter suppression.

Journalist Carl Bernstein said Sunday that President Trump has discussed ways to challenge the results of the midterm elections if the GOP's grasp on power slips.

During an appearance on CNN, Bernstein said his sources relayed this information to him on Friday, warning that Trump has talked about a disruption campaign if the results are close but have the Democrats taking control of the House or Senate.

"I talked to people ... in touch with the White House on Friday who believe that, if the congressional midterms are very close and the Democrats were to win by five or seven seats, that Trump is already talking about how to throw legal challenges into the courts, sow confusion, declare a victory actually, and say that the election's been illegitimate," Bernstein said after being asked if Trump's challenge to fraudulent voters was a form of voter suppression.

Journalist Carl Bernstein said Sunday that President Trump has discussed ways to challenge the results of the midterm elections if the GOP's grasp on power slips.

During an appearance on CNN, Bernstein said his sources relayed this information to him on Friday, warning that Trump has talked about a disruption campaign if the results are close but have the Democrats taking control of the House or Senate.

"I talked to people ... in touch with the White House on Friday who believe that, if the congressional midterms are very close and the Democrats were to win by five or seven seats, that Trump is already talking about how to throw legal challenges into the courts, sow confusion, declare a victory actually, and say that the election's been illegitimate," Bernstein said after being asked if Trump's challenge to fraudulent voters was a form of voter suppression.

"Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King drew national attention last week for elaborating at length on his white nationalist views in a far-right Austrian propaganda outlet.

But in state legislatures across the country, GOP lawmakers’ embrace of openly racist or extremist figures, organizations and views often goes unnoticed. And even when it has been exposed in recent years, a Washington-based group that helps elect Republicans to state legislatures says nothing.

The Republican State Leadership Committee has provided funding to groups backing lawmakers and candidates with extremist and racist ties. It has not, however, publicly denounced any individual lawmakers or candidates, even though several state lawmakers’ extremist ties have been exposed in recent years."

Journalist Carl Bernstein said Sunday that President Trump has discussed ways to challenge the results of the midterm elections if the GOP's grasp on power slips.

During an appearance on CNN, Bernstein said his sources relayed this information to him on Friday, warning that Trump has talked about a disruption campaign if the results are close but have the Democrats taking control of the House or Senate.

"I talked to people ... in touch with the White House on Friday who believe that, if the congressional midterms are very close and the Democrats were to win by five or seven seats, that Trump is already talking about how to throw legal challenges into the courts, sow confusion, declare a victory actually, and say that the election's been illegitimate," Bernstein said after being asked if Trump's challenge to fraudulent voters was a form of voter suppression.

How can you suppress voting from fraudulent voters who shouldn't be voting in the first place? We'll have to ask the sources "in touch with the White House" I guess.

Just some info about voter fraud:

Studies Agree: Impersonation Fraud by Voters Very Rarely Happens

The Brennan Center’s seminal report on this issue, The Truth About Voter Fraud, found that most reported incidents of voter fraud are actually traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or bad data matching practices. The report reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for voter fraud, and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. Given this tiny incident rate for voter impersonation fraud, it is more likely, the report noted, that an American “will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”

A study published by a Columbia ... scientist tracked incidence rates for voter fraud for two years, and found that the rare fraud that was reported generally could be traced to “false claims by the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error.”

A 2017 analysis published in The Washington Post concluded that there is no evidence to support Trump’s claim that Massachusetts residents were bused into New Hampshire to vote.

A comprehensive 2014 study published in The Washington Post found 31 credible instances of impersonation fraud from 2000 to 2014, out of more than 1 billion ballots cast. Even this tiny number is likely inflated, as the study’s author counted not just prosecutions or convictions, but any and all credible claims.

Two studies done at Arizona State University, one in 2012 and another in 2016, found similarly negligible rates of impersonation fraud. The project found 10 cases of voter impersonation fraud nationwide from 2000-2012. The follow-up study, which looked for fraud specifically in states where politicians have argued that fraud is a pernicious problem, found zero successful prosecutions for impersonation fraud in five states from 2012-2016.

A review of the 2016 election found four documented cases of voter fraud.

Research into the 2016 election found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

A 2016 working paper concluded that the upper limit on double voting in the 2012 election was 0.02%. The paper noted that the incident rate was likely much lower, given audits conducted by the researchers showed that “many, if not all, of these apparent double votes could be a result of measurement error.”

A 2014 paper concluded that “the likely percent of non-citizen voters in recent US elections is 0.”

A 2014 study that examined impersonation fraud both at the polls and by mail ballot found zero instances in the jurisdictions studied.

A 2014 study by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, which reflected a literature review of the existing research on voter fraud, noted that the studies consistently found “few instances of in-person voter fraud.”

While writing a 2012 book, a researcher went back 30 years to try to find an example of voter impersonation fraud determining the outcome of an election, but was unable to find even one.

A 2012 study exhaustively pulled records from every state for all alleged election fraud, and found the overall fraud rate to be “infinitesimal” and impersonation fraud by voters at the polls to be the rarest fraud of all: only 10 cases alleged in 12 years. The same studyfound only 56 alleged cases of non-citizen voting, in 12 years.

A 2012 assessment of Georgia’s 2006 election found “no evidence that election fraud was committed under the auspices of deceased registrants.”

A 2011 study by the Republican National Lawyers Association found that, between 2000 and 2010, 21 states had 1 or 0 convictions for voter fraud or other kinds of voting irregularities.

A 2010 book cataloguing reported incidents of voter fraud concluded that nearly all allegations turned out to be clerical errors or mistakes, not fraud.

A 2009 analysis examined 12 states and found that fraud by voters was “very rare,” and also concluded that many of the cases that garnered media attention were ultimately unsubstantiated upon further review.

The Fifth Circuit, in an opinion finding that Texas’s strict photo ID law is racially discriminatory, noted that there were “only two convictions for in-person voter impersonation fraud out of 20 million votes cast in the decade” before Texas passed its law.

In its opinion striking down North Carolina’s omnibus restrictive election law —which included a voter ID requirement — as purposefully racially discriminatory, the Fourth Circuit noted that the state “failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud in North Carolina.”

A federal trial court in Wisconsin reviewing that state’s strict photo ID law found “that impersonation fraud — the type of fraud that voter ID is designed to prevent — is extremely rare” and “a truly isolated phenomenon that has not posed a significant threat to the integrity of Wisconsin’s elections.”

Even the Supreme Court, in its opinion in Crawford upholding Indiana’s voter ID law, noted that the record in the case “contains no evidence of any [in-person voter impersonation] fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history.” Two of the jurists who weighed in on that case at the time — Republican-appointed former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and conservative appellate court Judge Richard Posner — have since announced they regret their votes in favor of the law, with Judge Posner noting that strict photo ID laws are “now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud prevention.”

Government Investigations Agree: Voter Fraud Is Rare

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a longtime proponent of voter suppression efforts, argued before state lawmakers that his office needed special power to prosecute voter fraud, because he knew of 100 such cases in his state. After being granted these powers, he has brought six such cases, of which only four have been successful. The secretary has also testified about his review of 84 million votes cast in 22 states, which yielded 14 instances of fraud referred for prosecution, which amounts to a 0.0000...fraud rate.

Texas lawmakers purported to pass its strict photo ID law to protect against voter fraud. Yet the chief law enforcement official in the state responsible for such prosecutions knew of only one conviction and one guilty plea that involved in-person voter fraud in all Texas elections from 2002 through 2014.

A specialized United States Department ...stice unit formed with the goal of finding instances of federal election fraud examined the 2002 and 2004 federal elections, and were able to prove that 0.00000013 percent of ballots cast were fraudulent. There was no evidence that any of these incidents involved in-person impersonation fraud. Over a five year period, they found “no concerted effort to tilt the election.”

In Maine, an investigation into 200 college students revealed no evidence of fraud. Shortly thereafter, an Elections Commission appointed by a Republican secretary of state found “there is little or no history in Maine of voter impersonation or identification fraud.”

In Florida, a criminal investigation into nine individuals who allegedly committed absentee ballot fraud led to all criminal charges being dismissed against all voters.

In 2012, Florida Governor Rick Scott initiated an effort to remove non-citizen registrants from the state’s rolls. The state’s list of 182,000 alleged non-citizen registrants quickly dwindled to 198. Even this amended list contained many false positives, such as a WWII veteran born in Brooklyn. In the end, only 85 non-citizen registrants were identified and only one was convicted of fraud, out of a total of 12 million registered voters.

In Iowa, a multi-year investigation into fraud led to just 27 prosecutions out of 1.6 million ballots cast. In 2014 the state issued a report on the investigation citing only six prosecutions.

In Wisconsin, a task force charged 20 individuals with election crimes. The majority charged were individuals with prior criminal convictions, who are often caught up by confusing laws regarding restoration of their voting rights.

The verdict is in from every corner that voter fraud is sufficiently rare that it simply could not and does not happen at the rate even approaching that which would be required to “rig” an election. Electoral integrity is key to our democracy, and politicians who genuinely care about protecting our elections should focus not on phantom fraud concerns, but on those abuses that actually threaten election security.

As historians and election experts have catalogued, there is a long history in this country of racially suppressive voting measures — including poll taxes and all-white primaries — put in place under the guise of stopping voter fraud that wasn’t actually occurring in the first place. The surest way toward voting that is truly free, fair, and accessible is to know the facts in the face of such rhetoric.

Journalist Carl Bernstein said Sunday that President Trump has discussed ways to challenge the results of the midterm elections if the GOP's grasp on power slips.

During an appearance on CNN, Bernstein said his sources relayed this information to him on Friday, warning that Trump has talked about a disruption campaign if the results are close but have the Democrats taking control of the House or Senate.

"I talked to people ... in touch with the White House on Friday who believe that, if the congressional midterms are very close and the Democrats were to win by five or seven seats, that Trump is already talking about how to throw legal challenges into the courts, sow confusion, declare a victory actually, and say that the election's been illegitimate," Bernstein said after being asked if Trump's challenge to fraudulent voters was a form of voter suppression.

BREAKING: Garland County in Arkansas has just shut down 3 of their 4 early voting sites after "realizing" that the Democratic candidate for Secretary of State was left off their ballots. There is no word when the voting sites will reopen

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A new report published in the Washington Post from American Public Media stated that 107,000 people have been removed from Georgia’s voting rolls for not voting in previous elections.

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From November 2008 to November 2010, the median purge rate in the Sunshine State was 0.2 percent. That number jumped to 3.6 percent from 2012 to 2014. And new data show it’s jumped again: Between December 2016 and September 2018, Florida has purged more than 7 percent of its voters.

Not only can we tell that purges have increased — we also know where the biggest purges are happening. Hardee, Hendry, Palm Beach, and Okaloosa counties have each purged more than 10 percent of their voters in the last two years.

North Carolina’s purge rates fall in between Florida and Georgia. Forty of its one hundred counties were covered under Section V of the Voting Rights Act at the time of the Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013. The average purge rate in the state increased modestly between 2010 to 2014, from 8.0 to 8.8 percent. Like in Georgia and Florida, however, this didn’t represent a temporary increase, but rather has been sustained over the past few years. Between September of 2016 and May of 2018 (the latest date data is available), the state purged 11.7 percent of its voter rolls. Just 19 of its counties purged fewer than 10 percent of their voters, and no county purged fewer than 8 percent. These purges have been especially troubling for voters of color – in 90 out of 100 counties, voters of color were over-represented among the purged group.

Georgia secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp improperly purged more than 340,000 voters from the state’s registration rolls, an investigation charges.

Greg Palast, a journalist and the director of the Palast Investigative Fund, said an analysis he commissioned found 340,134 voters were removed from the rolls on the grounds that they had moved – but they actually still live at the address where they are registered.

“Their registration is cancelled. Not pending, not inactive – cancelled. If they show up to vote on 6 November, they will not be allowed to vote. That’s wrong,” Palast told reporters on a call on Friday. “We can prove they’re still there. They should be allowed to vote.”